It is usually desirable to ship a relatively large quantity of product from a producer's factory or warehouse to keep the unit shipping and handling costs to a minimum. However smaller stores or retail outlets may find it undesirable to handle such quantities or to display a portion of such a shipment and store the remainder. As a consequence, potential sales outlets and sales may be lost. To avoid such a loss, producers may employ a variety of smaller containers or inserts to allow a chain store distributor to break the original shipping container open and distribute the contents in the smaller containers to the retail stores. Inserts or small containers for use inside larger containers are expensive to use and serve to reduce the profit of either the producer or the retailer.
An alternative to inserts is to design and employ a one-piece shipping container that can be readily divided into two subcontainers for re-shipping or for display purposes. One example of this type of container is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,135,457 issued to E. J. Risucci. The final assembled container, shown in FIG. 2 of Risucci, shows essentially two identical containers that are merely connected by the accordion flap 13 which has a tear line 14 to separate the two containers. This embodiment is not easily loaded initially and the accordian flap makes it difficult to ship the box in a squared configuration. In addition the subcontainers do not facilitate product display or access for price marking.
A more practical container is that disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 2,551,679 issued to E. F. Johnson on May 8, 1951. After erection, loading and sealing, the Johnson container includes a pair of overlapping, full depth, handle equipped partitions on each box half, which divide the product contained therein, and appropriate printed lines indicating the path along which dividing cuts are made on each side wall to sever the container into two subcontainers. The subcontainers are not of a display type nor do they facilitate price marking. In addition, another primary disadvantage of the Johnson-style container is that after it is divided into the two subcontainers, there is no secured panel where the common wall had been, to retain the product contained in the subcontainers. Therefore, in order to use these subcontainers for reshipping the user would need to secure the partition panels 25 in the closed position to cover the subcontainer's opening. This requires additional handling costs and may still make the use of such dividable container unattractive.
Other approaches to the solution of the problem are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,596,331 and 2,697,544 issued, respectively, on May 13, 1952 and Dec. 21, 1954 to K. C. Ferguson and E. Morand. Each of these references provides a container which is severable into sub-containers in use. However, each utilizes an expensive blank and results in subcontainers which are completely closed and therefore provide no opportunity to display the product or to price mark it.
Another container adapted to be split in two parts in use is taught in U.S. Pat. No. 3,542,192, which issued to C. O. Steck on Nov. 24, 1970. The Steck container permits manual separation of the top portion from the lower portion, which is then used as an open-top display tray to expose the contents and facilitate price marking. This structure does not, however, permit the original container to be divided into sub-portions for retail outlets nor is it adapted, following opening, to be shipped from one location to another.